Sign Petition!
Scroll Down to Sign the Petition
AN OPEN LETTER TO UC UNDERGRADUATES
September 12, 2009
Fellow University of California Undergraduates,
On September 11, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle reported the UC President’s proposal to raise student fees by over 30 percent by the fall of 2010. This unprecedented increase will bring student fees to over $ 10,000 annually for the first time ever, leading the University even further away from UC’s original mandate to provide free public education to the students of California.
Such measures are typical of the administration’s approach to this summer’s budget cuts. Instead of using surpluses from the university’s revenue-generating units, such as its medical centers, or through steeper pay cuts to top-paid executives, the Office of the President has sought to fund the budget shortfall on the backs of students and low-paid workers through fee increases, layoffs, and furloughs.
There is a real budget crisis in the state of California, but there is also a crisis of priorities on the part of the administration. While undergraduates now face record-high tuition costs, UC President Yudof has a salary that exceeds $ 800,000. Early this year the Regents approved raises for at least a dozen executives, many of whom make up to $ 500,000, while slashing the salaries of low-paid employees. The prospective tuition hike of 30 percent is further evidence that the Regents and the administration will continue to line their pockets at the expense of students who are left with massive debt and degrees that are increasingly uncompetitive.
The administration has used state cuts to advance a preexisting program of privatization and corporate streamlining. In doing so it has shown a heavy-handed disregard for shared governance with faculty, and has attempted to evade student reaction by making these decisions over the summer.
We therefore call on all UC undergraduates to walk out alongside our professors on September 24th, and indefinitely until our demands are met. This walkout is in solidarity with faculty whose organizational efforts have given us an opportunity to act on our concerns. It is in solidarity with striking UC workers, who are confronted with pay cuts throwing them back into poverty. It is in solidarity with graduate students, who are forced to deal with diminished funding and overcrowded classrooms. First and foremost the student walkout will demonstrate our own refusal of the administration’s policies.
We thus demand the following:
1) Rollback of student fees to 2008-2009 level. No new fee increases beyond the rate of inflation.
2) No furloughs or pay cuts for employees making under $ 40,000.
3) Return UC executive pay to 2006 levels, with a freeze on further increases.
Our concerns have been articulated before. The wastebaskets of the Regents and the Office of the President are filled with our complaints. We demand concrete action and solutions that will benefit the students, workers, and faculty who make up the University. We must act now in defense of these goals.
As UC undergraduates, we stand to lose everything the University has promised us. The September 24th walkout is the beginning of our fight for the future of public education in California.
We ask all UC undergraduates who support the walkout to sign their names using the form below.
